Sunday, July 31, 2011

I have recorded a video in which I present you the main features of the upcoming Wormworld Saga App! We are very close to the finish line and I expect the app to hit the app stores in August.

The app will be available for iPad and Android tablets. I will try to provide a comprehensive list of Android devices that will be able to run the app as soon as possible.

And just to make sure that everyone gets a clear picture of what my plans are with the app:

The app will not substitute the free online version of the Wormworld Saga on wormworldsaga.com. The graphic novel will remain to be free. The app will be a free download and there will be a free version of the graphic novel (without special features) inside the app, too. The free version inside the app will have a better image quality than the web version and the scrolling performance will be better than reading the graphic novel in the browser.
I've made a huge effort to make the Collector's Edition of each chapter attractive to you. If you purchase the Collector's Edition of a chapter inside the app, you will unlock the special features of this chapter, which includes the artwork and sketch mode, the production notes and the artbook items that are associated to this chapter. And of course, by purchasing the Collector's Edition you support the Wormworld Saga and help me to keep on working on it fulltime.

I'm looking forward to make this app available to you as soon as possible!

First, let me thank everyone who participated in this poll. This is very usefull data, not only for me but for anyone who thinks about focusing his publishing efforts on tablet devices. Of course you have to take these results with a grain of salt because followers of this blog definitely don't represent the general public. On the other hand, I don't think that the figures are extremely warped because in order to be interested in the Wormworld Saga and following this blog you don't have to own a tablet device in the first place so there's essentially no reason why the readers of this blog should have an above the average inclination to own a tablet device. So, I guess you could transfer these results to the general internet readership that also has an interest in webcomics. Well, I'm not a statistics specialist so please draw your own assumptions here.

At least we can savely say that these figures are valid for the Wormworld Saga readership and I must say that I'm really surprised. My guess would have been that a lot less people already own a tablet device. That 40% already have one and 9% are heavily inclined to get one is really encouraging.

I also want to address that I understand that a lot of you are disappointed to learn that the app is released for tablet devices only. That was the plan right from the beginning but I see that this information was somewhat buried inside the kickstarter campaign up to this point. The reason why the Wormworld Saga App isn't released for smartphones is simply that smartphone screens are too small to experience the Wormworld Saga as it is meant to be experienced. I actually could imagine a dedicated phone app in which the layout would be altered so that you would see individual panels in fullscreen but that would mean to create a whole other app and it would have been too high a risk and too much work to create two apps at once. However, I will keep the option of a dedicated smartphone app in mind and if I happen to be able to gather the ressources for that, I will definitely do it. But maybe this issue will be obsolute in a year or so. Word is that the next generation of iPhones get a bigger screen with higher resolution and a lot of smartphones are already very close to the 1024 pixels that the Wormworld Saga needs on the wide side to be fully displayed. So, let's see how this develops.

The Wormworld Saga App is nearing completion. This week should see the first complete version with all features and I roughly plan to record a preview video for next week.

Monday, July 18, 2011

My first week in the home office is over now and man - I've really got lots of stuff done! The app is very close to a first version (which will then be tested and polished) and I'm really looking forward to make it available to you as soon as we have finished our work on it and it's got the approval from Apple.

I also want to ask you to take part in a small poll that you'll find on the right side of the blog. Basically I want to find out what percentage of my followers own a tablet device and if they do, which OS is running on it. Later we'll also have a poll about price points but let's make one step at a time here.

Alright, still lots of work ahead. Let's get this second week rolling!

Monday, July 11, 2011

And here it is - my first day at the home office! I know what you're thinking - 1st July is already a week ago, what the heck was he doing all the time? Well, before diving into the Wormworld Saga with full speed I traveled to Graz, Austria where the nice people of video2brain recorded some brand new video workshops with me. We'd already produced a German workshop DVD in 2006 (and you can access the videos as online streams here) but a lot has changed in the last 5 years and I'm really happy that we were able to record some fresh material. Also, this time we recorded the videos in German and English so that a lot more people are going to be able to enjoy them. I will announce it here as soon as they become available.

Alright, after an intense week of recording in the studio I've now arrived at home. This travel to Graz served as a wonderful transition into my new work life I must say. At the weekend I did some rearrangement of the stuff in my studio and now I'm ready. There's a lot of stuff to do and finally I've got time to get things rolling.

My first priority at the moment is the Wormworld Saga App. We are planning to have it finished by the end of the month so I guess we can look forward to a launch in August. Then there's still some work to do on the kickstarter rewards on which I worked over the past 12 weekends. Here's some photos of the fun:

I'm going to finish my work on the rewards during the week now so I hope that I will be through with it pretty soon.

Well, and then of course there's the second chapter waiting. The preliminary version of it rested for 8 weeks and this is perfect for revising it now. I've learned that it is crucial to the process to give everything the time it needs. It will become a challenge to arrange for that when I'm starting to speed through my milestones from now on. I currently plan to create the preliminary version of chapter 3 before starting the final artwork for chapter 2 so that it can rest for some time, too. It might generally be a good idea to always be one chapter ahead with the prelims. Speed doesn't only have its benefits but also its pitfalls. But we'll maneuver our way around them!

By the way, in the last few month I have used the Wormworld Saga Facebook Fanpage to post smaller updates (like links to interviews and stuff like that) so you might be interested to subscribe to that to get the full fix on Wormworld Saga news. Essential updates will always be posted to the blog though. I'm still not quite sure what exactly to put on my Twitter but there might turn up more stuff in the future, too. Please share any ideas you might have!